


Wear It Well

by mellific



Category: Pride (2014)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:27:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28106244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mellific/pseuds/mellific
Summary: Steph rings in the New Year, before and after.
Relationships: Gethin & Steph (Pride), Gethin/Jonathan (Pride)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 31
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Wear It Well

**Author's Note:**

  * For [katonahottinroof](https://archiveofourown.org/users/katonahottinroof/gifts).



**BEFORE**

The shop is empty, door sign flipped firmly to CLOSED, rows of books dim and deserted behind the display of pine boughs tastefully framing Gethin's winter selection—and none of this should come as a surprise but here Steph is anyway, standing in front of the locked store in dismay.

She peers through the window for another moment, feeling foolish, then sighs. Sidney Abbott's been decent company over the holidays but Steph has had a hankering for something warm—Dickinson, maybe. Well, no matter now. She'll walk a little of the way back, she thinks; at least to Green Park, so the trip won't have been a total waste. 

She's only half a block away when a voice calls out "Steph!" stopping her in her tracks. Turning, she sees Gethin poking his head out of the store. Steph hesitates and raises her hand in a half-wave but Gethin looks at her expectantly until she walks back over, feeling a bit like a stray cat. "Thought I recognized that particular shade of purple," he says, smiling.

Steph laughs a little and runs a hand through her hair, "When you're as easy to lose in a crowd as I am, you have to compensate." 

"Well," Gethin nudges the door open and tilts his head towards the inside of the shop, "can I offer you a tea?" Steph wavers; Gethin's surely just being polite—he barely knows Steph, after all. They've only had a handful of conversations outside of the various group meetings and Steph thinks that her defining feature must be her habit of treating his shop's book purchase policy as a personal lending library. But there's nothing appealing about the prospect of her dark, empty flat, and after all, Steph thinks, he could have let her walk away when he saw her in the first place.

"Sorry, to put you out," Steph says as she follows him up the stairs, pulling her jacket a little tighter around herself, "I just wasn't thinking when I headed out this morning."

Gethin shakes his head, "It's no bother. I know what that's like—I close up shop for a few days and I lose track of the month completely." He ducks into the kitchen and Steph sits herself gingerly at the table, glancing around. It's small and sparsely furnished, a pile of mail and papers swallowing up most of the table, with a space cleared out in front of one chair. Steph gingerly stacks a few envelopes.

"Oh god, sorry," Gethin says, as he steps out of the kitchen with a mug in each hand, "Here, let me–" he puts the tea down and nudges one towards Steph, then sweeps the papers into a pile. "Sorry!" He says again, flushing a little, "Don't have too many people up here." 

And she can see that it's true. The flat has molded itself around him—or maybe the other way around—the same way hers has. It is a space that is shaped to its sole inhabitant. Steph wraps her hands around the mug and takes a slow sip as Gethin sits down across from her, setting a plate of biscuits on the table between them.

"Well," Gethin says, tapping the rim of his mug awkwardly, "Not much of a celebration, but happy New Year." He smiles at her, crooked and a bit wry, and Steph can't help but smile back.

"No it's– it's great," she says, and Gethin snorts at that, but it is, she thinks: the unexpected kindness, the warmth from the cold. "Happy New Year, Gethin."

***

The next year Jonathan is there, and Steph makes sure to steer clear of Gay's the Word over the holidays. They've only been seeing each other for a few months, and Gethin's far from demonstrative—he doesn't glitter with happiness the way Jeff tends to, or wield it like a knife the way Mark does. It's the surprise that gets to Steph; the way Gethin's eyes follow Jonathan around the store when his back is turned, the half-disbelieving smile that he ducks his head to hide.

She doesn't begrudge him this: the happiness in the set of his shoulders, in the brightness of his voice when he greets new customers. Gethin wears it well. But Steph thinks that if she spent the holiday in his flat with Jonathan's bright scarves draped over the back of the sofa and Jonathan's mismatched mugs cluttering up the cabinet, it would only make it worse to return to her own rooms afterward.

When she comes back to the shop in the new year, scribbling her name down on the sheet for Stella's latest reading group endeavor and meandering over to idly pick through the new stock, Gethin cheerfully asks how her holidays were.

"Oh, not too bad," Steph says, and she sounds so light and offhand about it that she almost believes herself.

***

**AFTER**

"Steph! Come in, come in." Gethin waves her into the flat, the living room already suffused with chatter and laughter, "Your jacket," he starts, but Steph waves him off as someone yells _"Gethin!"_ from another room.

"I know where to throw it, go, go." Gethin shoots her a grateful grin before he's immediately swept away by some minor emergency or else by Jonathan's urgent demand for a taste-tester.

She sees Mark holding court in a corner, gesturing wildly as he talks to one of the bright-eyed new members of LGSM, but, more importantly, she spots her target sitting half-swallowed up by Jonathan and Gethin's old sofa. "Bromley, you _shit,_ " Steph yells, stomping over. 

***

They'd decided on a private Christmas with just the two of them, as anyone they wanted to see would be at Gethin and Jonathan's New Year's Eve party, and neither she nor Bromley had a particular gift for entertaining guests. Steph _had_ wanted to cook a chicken—Bromley had been to at least a month of catering school, after all, and surely the principles for baking something in the oven were roughly applicable. But after what Steph would term a _learning experience_ wherein they'd discovered the truly baffling variety of things one had to remove from a chicken before cooking it, she'd come around to the myriad charms of Chinese takeaway.

And Steph had graciously provided a bottle of Riesling so they could get tipsy while heckling the Christmas programmes, secure in the knowledge that she had another safely tucked away to bring to the party—or she would have, had her ungrateful roommate not stolen it from their pantry before leaving the flat early to pick up his boyfriend, forcing _Steph_ to frantically detour through three different shops, all closed, before giving up to arrive empty-handed at the bookstore.

***

"Sorry, sorry!" Joe says from the couch, grinning and unrepentant. He untangles himself from Andrew and hops up, giving her a squeeze around the shoulders. Steph huffs and rolls her eyes, but before she can tear into him some more, she hears "Steph!" from behind.

"This is not over," she says, so he knows where they stand, before turning to brace herself for Stella.

"Oh, I'm glad I caught you," Stella says as Steph submits herself to another perfunctory sideways hug in greeting, "Listen, we're short a body for the collection shift next week, if you've got an hour on Thursday–" Steph manages to suppress a sigh—she's glad she and Stella are on warmer terms now that there's been some distance from the Lesbians Against Pit Closures schism, but it often seems that Stella, like Mark, simply doesn't have an _off_ switch.

A hand suddenly drops onto her shoulder and Steph jumps about a foot in the air as Jonathan says, "No shop talk at the party!" Stella's eyes narrow but Jonathan shakes his head firmly, "You know the rules. And I need this one to assist me in the absolutely critical next phase of my masterpiece," he adds, gesturing expansively towards the kitchen.

"Thanks for that," Steph says, trailing Jonathan into the kitchen where he immediately pushes a bowl into her hands and gestures at her to start whisking.

"You were a perfect sous chef last year," Jonathan says, smiling, "If I ask Gethin he gets all long-suffering about it and starts making wistful noises about how much _faster_ it would be to order from a shop, the heathen."

Steph grins back companionably, "Bit of a bigger production this year, though." 

"Hah!" Jonathan says, bringing the sifter and icing sugar over, "A _bit_. And Mark was making noises about inviting the Dulais contingent next year—we'll need a second kitchen, at this rate. You know, Gwen rang the other day–"

Steph whisks industriously as Jonathan launches into a retelling of Gwen's latest kitchen escapade, letting the words wash over her as he finishes sifting the sugar and turns back to attend to the large pot simmering on the stove. Through the doorway she can see Jeff, stag for once, laughing with Mike over something in the corner, while Bromley and Stella have their heads bent over the coffee table, Joe marking something out on a flyer in clear defiance of Jonathan's "no shop talk" rule.

As Steph is finishing up the buttercream, Gethin walks into the kitchen looking somewhat weather-worn. He nods at Steph in greeting, then goes to slide his arms around Jonathan's waist, slumping til his forehead rests between Jonathan's shoulder blades. Steph watches fondly as Jonathan reaches blindly around to pat Gethin's shoulder, still stirring intently with the other hand. 

They stay like that for several long moments, until finally Gethin takes a deep breath. "All right," he says, untangling himself and straightening up, "Back to the battlefield."

***

Jonathan's masterpiece, everyone agrees, has surpassed expectations. The sponge cake is light and melts in the mouth, the buttercream is smooth and airy, and Steph _is_ accepting tips, thank you very much. There's a scramble for plates and forks as they carry it out of the kitchen, and Steph takes her slice over to the sofa where Bromley is still sitting. She nudges him over and sinks down with a sigh, glad to be off her feet. Gethin is perched on the arm of the sofa, but as conversation winds down and eyes begin to turn towards the television, she tugs him down next to her so that Jonathan can steal his seat.

"Five!" Mark yells, and everyone chimes in, off-beat but mostly in unison "Four! Three!" Steph takes a moment to look around the room—Jonathan with his arm wrapped around Gethin's shoulders, Mike defending his cake from Jeff's inquisitive fork, Mark staring intently at the television with cake on his cheek—and thinks that she must be alight from the inside, that one person simply cannot hold all of _this_

"... two! One! _Happy New Year!_ " Bromley turns from snogging Andrew to smack a loud kiss onto Steph's cheek, and as she's flailing away, Jonathan swoops in to get her from the other side, ruffling her hair to Steph's indignant squawks. Gethin catches her eye, grinning, and Steph is laughing too, a clear, bright feeling bubbling up inside her as Gethin leans over to kiss her gently on the cheek as well.

It's a new year.


End file.
